CHAPTER 59
The silence stretches between us, heavy and raw.
And for the first time after telling that story, it doesn’t feel like judgment hanging there.
It feels like mourning.
For all the women like my mom.
For all the times the system failed and someone like me was born into the wreckage.
Before either of us can figure out what to say next, the food arrives.
Dim sum spreads across the table like a parade of tiny, steaming miracles.
Soup dumplings glistening with broth, shrimp har gow wrapped in translucent rice paper, crispy pork buns split open to reveal sticky-sweet centers.
It’s a feast.
A feast of everything I love and didn’t realize I was starving for.
I blink down at it, thrown off balance by the absurd generosity of it all—by the way Roger somehow ordered exactly what I would have picked if my brain hadn’t been chewing on knives and blood and broken memories.
I set the tea down, my hands still trembling faintly as I position my chopsticks.
The pork bun is soft and warm and perfect.
I pop it into my mouth, savoring the rich burst of meat and scallion, letting the world blur at the edges just for a second.
I don’t want to sit in the heavy silence between us. Not after everything I said.
So I pick up the verbal equivalent of a flamethrower and casually light it.
“Why don’t you want a partner?” I ask, reaching for another dumpling.
Roger stiffens instantly, eyes narrowing like he smelled a trap and is already plotting which limb he’s willing to sacrifice to escape.
He doesn’t answer.
Which is exactly why I push harder.
“You asked me something personal,” I say sweetly, stuffing a piece of crispy pork bun into my mouth like an adorable threat. “It’s only fair you answer, too. Or”—I pause dramatically, holding the steaming dumpling aloft—“face the soup dumpling consequences.”
He glares.
I raise an eyebrow.
The bun wobbles dangerously between my chopsticks.
Finally, with a grunt that sounds like it physically pains him, he scrubs a hand over his face.
“My best friend,” he mutters, “was my partner.”
He pauses, jaw ticking, and I get a bad feeling about this. I regret asking and pushing—but also, he’s opening up. So there’s no way I’m stopping now.
“He slept with my fiancée.”
The words drop between us like a lead weight—heavy and sharp.
I blink, stunned.
“I caught them the night before our wedding,” he adds, voice low, like the memory still scrapes something raw in him.
I gasp, clutching my tea like it might save me. “That’s awful.”
I can understand why he doesn’t want anyone to get close again. Best friend and partner at work—and he lost the woman he thought he’d spend the rest of his life with.
It explains why he’s got the reputation he does around the courthouse. Another notch on the Blackwood bedpost, if you catch my drift.
“She was my high school sweetheart,” he keeps going, shrugging one massive shoulder like it doesn’t still gut him. “Should’ve known it was doomed to fail from our first kiss.”
“What happened with your first kiss?” My eyes are wide, and I hold my soup dumpling in a spoon as I bite a hole in it, the rich broth seeping out like it’s joining the conversation.
“Our braces got stuck together. Orthodontist had to separate us.”
I choke so hard on the broth I almost die.
Like—actual tears-in-the-eyes, gasping-for-air-level choking.
He’s dead serious. Sitting there in this dim sum restaurant, looking like he’s recounting a POW story, while I’m trying not to faceplant into the siu mai.
“It’s not funny.”
I snort. Actually snort and cover my mouth quickly like that will hold it in.
“We had to sit like that for two fucking hours,” he says—trying and failing to convince me of the gravity of the situation. “Do you have any idea how much of her spit went into my mouth?”
I lose it completely.
Full-body laughter, fists pounding the table, suffocating myself with my napkin to try and stifle my wheezing.
Roger tries to scowl.
Really, he does.
But I catch it—the little twitch at the corner of his mouth, the almost-smile he’s fighting with everything he’s got. But he can’t hold it back.
He gives me a full-force smile, dimple and all, before he looks down and shakes his head.
A soft, reluctant chuckle rumbles out of him—so rare and raw it’s not been observed since the Jurassic period.
My laughter dies down, and I stare at him because he’s beautiful like this.
Untouched by anger or betrayal or grief for once.
Just... him.
Unarmored. Real.
His green eyes brighten, and something in my chest goes stupid and warm and helpless.
“Your dimples are cute,” I blurt before I can stop myself, still a little breathless from laughing, voice too soft to pretend it’s a joke.
For the first time since I met him, he looks caught off guard.
Not brooding.
Not calculating the ways this could all go sideways.
Just... caught.
And I like being the one that snared him.
The second the words leave her mouth—your dimples are cute—something short-circuits in my chest.
Not that I didn’t like it.
I fucking did.
Probably more than I should.
So naturally, like the emotionally stunted bastard I am, I counter with the first thing that comes to mind.
"What about you, Lolli-pop?"
She glares like I just suggested sacrificing a litter of puppies.
"Don’t call me that," she snaps, cheeks still pink from laughing.
"Sweet little pink Lollipop," I tease, popping thep, dragging it out just to watch her squirm. "What was your amazing first kiss story? Please tell me it was equally tragic. I need this."
She hesitates, fiddling with her teacup, blowing it off with a shrug so casual it might as well come with a neon sign:this is a lie.
I narrow my eyes. "Come on. You got to hear about my orthodontic horror show. Fair’s fair."
She squirms, taps her nails against the ceramic. Then finally, with a huff, mutters it under her breath like that’ll make it disappear.
"I’ve—never been kissed."
I blink.
Excuse the absoluteshit fuckout of me. What?
The whole world screeches to a halt.
"Wait," I say, because my brain clearly didn’t process that right, "never?"